Bihar's shotgun weddings

Lalbabu Prasad, 16, looks like a nocturnal animal caught in a pair of headlights. He is irrevocably grim and unwilling to come out of his shell. Prasad, who stays with his maternal grandparents after the death of his father, a constable in Jharkhand, has reasons to be wary of strangers. In May 2009, he was abducted at gunpoint and was forced to marry a 13-year-old girl, Babita. His friend Praveen--who tried to come to his rescue--died when the kidnappers fired their weapons to scare him away.

The practice of men abducted by prospective in-laws for marriage is an established custom in parts of the state.

Prasad was considered eligible for abduction since he had been appointed as a child constable in Jharkhand on compensatory grounds. He gets Rs 5,000 a month and will be accommodated in the Jharkhand Police once he attains adulthood. Hours later, when the police rescued Prasad, he was already married. They arrested Babita and her mother Kaushalya Devi for abduction. Babita's father Krishna Yadav, brother Anil Kumar and other accused are still absconding.

This was literally a shotgun marriage but in Bihar such marriage abductions are so common that they don't raise eyebrows. The practice of men abducted by prospective in-laws for marriage to their daughters is an established custom known as "Pakaraua Vivah," which translates roughly as capture and marry off. Many of these marriages survive.

LALBABU PRASAD, 16 In May 2009, armed men accosted Prasad (above) when he was coming out of a coaching centre on a sultry afternoon. They took him to a temple in the adjoining Jehanabad district where he was forced to marry 13-year-old Babita (left) at gunpoint. The two families are yet to reach an amicable agreement.

For instance, the family of 13-year-old Rajesh Rai of Patna has now agreed to accept the bride Vinita with whom the boy was forced to tie the knot. On February 11, Rai was kidnapped when he went out to sell milk. The boy was taken to the girl's home, in a nearby village of Patna district, and after a day of captivity was made to marry 10-year-old Vinita. Under pressure, he allowed himself to be married to a girl he had never seen before and who also was not of legally marriageable age. Rai's father Ram Pravesh Rai, who had filed a missing person complaint, has now agreed to accept the alliance.

"My daughter-in-law is with her parents now but she will join us soon. What can I do if the marriage has already been solemnised? An agreement has been reached," says the father.

Independent surveys by INDIA TODAY suggest that of late the rate of opposition to these abductions for marriages has steadily grown in the last few years, although a majority of the involved families, like that of Rai, prefer rapprochement to police cases.

The abduction of boys for marriage has taken shape with the passage of time because of a slew of social evils like dowry. It is invariably the bride's family that carries the material load of arranging marriages. It becomes such a burden that it often leads to "de-valuation" of girls in traditional societies like one that Bihar has. Since marriages have become a money-minting enterprise for parents of boys, many families have adopted desperate measures like abducting a bridegroom because they cannot arrange a decent dowry for their daughter's marriage.

Such families in Bihar have continued to snatch men--often young boys--because it is easier than approaching the boys' families and cheaper than paying the standard dowry. Kamta Singh, chairman of a primary agriculture credit society in Rampur, Nawada, claims that almost 90 per cent marriages in the villages have been solemnised by kidnapping a bridegroom.

VIKASH KUMAR, 17Son of a former village chief, he was abducted and forced to marry Juli, a Class IX student in 2009. Kumar, in high school now, has agreed to accept Juli as his wife as his father has reached an agreement with his in-laws.

According to villagers, a good number of boys are kidnapped and married off during matriculation examination when they come to appear at the Narhat examination centre from adjoining villages. In almost all such cases, the villagers extend support to the girl's family. The ceremony is videographed so that the tapes can be used as evidence later.

In fact, priests of village temples fully cooperate with the girl's family and issue a certificate of marriage. Clearly, the approval from society for such marriages has emboldened the public to take the law into their hands. The practice has technically been illegal for years, but the law rarely has been enforced. Brutal as the custom is, it is widely perceived as practical.

"Most people don't care it's illegal because there is a very high possibility of reconciliation. The boy's family frets and fumes after the marriage but only to raise a dowry demand. Assured that the boy is now theirs, the girl's parents are also willing to settle things by offering one-fourth of the usual dowry that they would have had to offer if the boy was not already married," said Hetukar Jha, a retired sociology professor at Patna University.

RAHUL, 18 Sixteen-year-old Banti (left) was married to Rahul, who is pursuing graduation. Rahul had gone to Rampur village in Nawada in the aftermath of a relative's death when Banti's father abducted him and forced him into marriage. Both Banti's and Rahul's elder brothers have been married the same way.

Most forced marriages have survived, as the disputes arising out of them are settled in the village itself, with the elders bringing about rapprochement between the two families on grounds of the girl's future. Though forced marriages have traditionally been prevalent among the so-called upper castes in Bihar, the practice is picking up even among the middle castes where the demand for dowry has sky-rocketed over the years. Besides, parents have also become more ambitious. They want to marry their daughters to well-off boys.

In the last few years, however, the increasing number of FIRs suggests that there has been a growing resistance to all such abductions of boys for marriage. In 2009, of a total 3,124 recorded abduction cases in Bihar, 1,336 have been bracketed as kidnapping for marriage. On the other hand, only eighty people were kidnapped for ransom in the state. Bihar's Additional Director General of Police, CID, Rajvardhan Sharma, however, claims that forced marriages are on the wane. "Sometimes even elopement cases have been registered as abductions," he says.

Abduction for marriage appears to have remained unabated in 2010 too. The records suggest that in January this year, 224 cases of abductions have been reported. While 87 of these cases pertain to abduction for marriage, only eight of them have been for ransom. In fact, abduction for marriage is not a new trend, but what makes Bihar a standout case is the fact that here boys are abducted for marriage unlike in the rest of the country where it is women who are usually kidnapped.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in India Report 2007 suggests that of the total 27,561 cases of abduction reported across the country in 2007, nearly 47 per cent were for marriage. Of this only 5,174 were men. According to the report, 1,372 were within 10 to 18 years of age and 861 were below 15. And Bihar is also the only large state where more men (1,268) were kidnapped while the figure for women was 1,262.

Clearly, eligible bachelors continue to live under the threat of abduction for marriage. Many social thinkers attribute the persistence of this queer trend to the high number of dowry cases in the state. According to the NCRB report, Bihar has almost double the rate of dowry death against the national average of 0.7 per cent. "If you kidnap a boy, the bridegroom's family will know your muscle power and will never dare to torture the girl," says Jha.

However, beyond the statistics, hope never dies. With vermilion pronouncedly applied in the parting of her hair, 13-year-old Babita has started attending a school in Jehanabad where she studies in Class VII. She has already lost a year and with her father still absconding, appears worried that Prasad's family will be seeking to rescind the marriage. Just in her teens, her mind and her worries appear at odds.

"I want him to honour the marriage," she says with an apprehensive look. In Bihar's backwaters, forced marriages usually survive because they often only thinly vary from arranged marriages, where too the couples hardly have a say. That perhaps is a bigger irony.

"Almost 90 per cent of marriages in the village have been solemnised by kidnapping a bridegroom."KAMTA SINGH, Chairman of a Primary Agriculture Credit Society in Rampur, Nawada

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